The Loose Salute: West Coast boys and West Coast girls

The Loose Salute recast Cornwall as Laurel Canyon. They’ve got the harmonies, but what about the free love, asks DAN CAIRNS

As the interview ends, the Loose Salute's manager appears with major-label record contracts for the band to sign. Signatures are appended to the inch-thick documents and champagne is opened for a toast. Across the pub-garden table, the five-piece's co-founder, principal songwriter, drummer and occasional singer, Ian McCutcheon, allows himself a smile: the affirmation the record contract offers seems to have satisfied even him. Getting him to acknowledge that he and his group have made a beautiful album, Tuned to Love, full of dreamy, sun-soaked and melancholy-tinged pop, is quite another matter.

"I don't know if it's got a place at the moment or not," he says sheepishly. "Someone give him a slap," suggests the band's lead singer, Lisa Billson, trying to cheer McCutcheon up. "If it's shoved in their faces, people might just get it. They're playing our single [Turn the Radio Up] in Topshop.